News

C++ Duels with Python in New Popularity Report

• By David Ramel
• April 8, 2019

Reigning "programming language of the year" Python changed places with C++ in this month's edition of the TIOBE Index that tracks programming language popularity based on Web searches.

Despite enjoying the largest percentage change from April 2018 to April 2019, Python moved from No. 3 in last month's report to No. 4 in this month's report, changing places with C++.

As TIOBE noted, the change doesn't reflect anything bad happening in the Python camp.

"Python is scoring all-time highs almost every month," TIOBE said. "It is just that C++ is also getting more and more popular. C++ is still far away from its popularity in the beginning of this century when it had a market share of more than 15 percent.

"The complexity and the delay of releasing the new language definition C++0x pulled the language back at that time. That new language standard, eventually named C++11 after its release in 2011, has made the language much simpler, safer and more expressive at the same time. It took some extra years before the C++11 standard was adopted because the community had to wait for proper compiler support. But now that the C++11, C++14 and C++17 standards are supported by the most important C++ compilers, i.e. Gcc, Clang and Visual Studio, the popularity of C++ is reviving."

TIOBE's ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers worldwide, courses and third-party vendors, tracked by data from popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu. TIOBE says its index doesn't track the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written. "The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system," it said.